08-24-2016, 09:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-16-2018, 01:03 PM by Thaal Sinestro.)
Ruddy fingers swept over the man’s dirty blonde beard, his beady blue eyes darting as each man passed him by. His hand returned to the side and rested on the handle of his Schofield Model 3, which might have looked like it was backwards if you didn’t know any better. Some folks would even take time out of their day to stop and tell the man that he had his holsters on the wrong way. But sure as he knew that bullets could kill a man who didn’t mind their own business, he knew that those pistols were pointed the right direction.
He idly pushed the edge of his black hat, peering out from below the wide brim as a coach rode by him down the street. The brougham didn’t even have paint on it but boasted thick locks, iron bars, and more than a few rough looking guards on top of it. It didn’t take much thinking for the man to know that there must have been something inside worth keeping.
The man took a few steps forward as he watched the carriage pass, moving from the shade of the awning he had been under and into the light. The sun caught on the copper buttons that rode down the doubt breasts of his bone-white leather jacket, even if they were more than a little tarnished. His long, slim, clay-colored trousers also sported buttons down each leg, but didn’t have the same shine as the Royal Army Pay Corps ones on his top.
After looking back and forth for a moment, he stalked down the street, following the wagon around a turn at a lazy intersection. It slowed to a stop in front of a large structure with metallic walls and a heavy looking door, and the men offloaded from the top. Even in the daylight, the bright sign that hung on the building’s top read “BANK” in flickering, neon wire.
Nobody had to know everything about the world they lived in as long as they knew where the money came from and where it went. He figured that it couldn’t be that much different in this place. Looking down, he wiped a speck of blood off his jacket. After all, he did know that a bullet still killed a man.
Squinting his eyes, the pale man looked at the burly guards open the locks and open the doors to the wagon, allowing some workers to begin unloading it. Some kind of big green fella, a metal man with a yellow cloak, and then three dumb looking rough-necks. At least three of them were something he was used to shooting. He figured the other two wouldn’t much like the taste of forty four caliber better than a normal person would.
He stalked back the way he had come, around the edge of a wooden building. Even in the middle of the day, summer heat at its peak, the town was bustling. With all manner of freaks and monstrosities all around, the man looked perfectly harmless, if not downright normal. It was almost too easy for him to blend into a passing group and duck into an alley. With all the sound of the electrical generators humming and the sparks from poor connections, not a soul noticed as he held his hands in front of him and summoned a shimmering ball of omnilium.
When he was done with his task, the man strode quickly from the alley and back into the roadway, shouldering his way through the crowd of people and toward the group of guards and their cargo. The green one spotted him and stepped forward, aggressively cocking the lever of his carbine. “I’mma need you ta step away from tha wagon while we unload, stranga,” the creature boomed with inhuman baritone.
The man in the white jacket looked past the giant creature to the robot in yellow. His eyes narrowed as the other three men stepped up to surround him. “Ya’ll some kind of lawmen?” His eyes snapped back to the strange creature that stood before him. The four creatures and their overseer glared into him, their fingers already on their triggers. “I hate lawmen.”
Two pistols left their holsters and fired before the wagon guards could do more than look surprised. Two of the thick-necked humans immediately fell, and the third only managed half a shout before a hole opened up in his neck. The green man cracked off a panicked shot that went over the shooter’s shoulder, only to catch two shots to the chest. When the brightly colored bruiser didn’t immediately fall, the outlaw crossed his left hand over the right pistol and fanned the hammer four more times.
Black powder filled the air, the man’s nostrils stinging with sulfur. He stepped through the smoke and over the green man’s body and its pool of purple blood. Both of his revolvers were leveled at the machine, which hadn’t moved an inch. The man in the white jacket gestured his weapons towards the carriage. “There anything special I gotta know about them boxes?” he asked, a cold edge to his voice.
A static-ridden chuckle came from somewhere inside the robot, its amber eyes glowing with a sinister aura. “Only that they aren’t yours, traveler,” he, if you would call it a he, replied.
The highwayman had to resist the urge to pull the trigger. “I ain’t got much patience for banter, mister.”
Ignoring the man’s statement, the robot tilted its head to the side and parted the tattered yellow cloth that hung around him. A massive revolver hung at the machination’s side, rounds bigger than the man in white had ever seen outside of a cannonball. “Now, how many bullets you got left in that pea-shooter? I know the right one’s empty,” his crackling voice rattled. “You got three, right?”
The crack of the robber’s pistol rang out, and sparks flew from the robot’s face as he was tossed, his back slamming into the side of the carriage he had been sent to defend. The man stared hard for a moment, not sure if he’d killed the damn thing.
“Well, that’s two left,” it growled, and pushed itself up off of the heavily armored vehicle. Another dead-eye shot ricocheted off its brow. The machine’s face was a mangle of bent steel and sparking wires, but its jaw still opened. “Only got one left, traveler.”
The outlaw tore open the top two buttons of his jacket, revealing a bundle of thick red rods. “That’ll do,” he said calmly, pulled the dynamite free, and tossed it in the final guard’s direction.
The aperture of the robot’s optical lenses widened and he dove for cover, but the bark of the man’s pistol heralded a wave of concussive force, smoke and fire that erupted in every direction. The wide street filled with dust, raining debris and screams of the terrified secondaries that hadn’t had the time to run away yet.
Shreds of burning paper and wood fluttered down from the sky, embers danced along the ground. A grotesque silence held over the entryway of the Town’s bank, as if time itself was afraid to see what had happened. The smoke choked the sun’s rays, but if you strained your ears, you could hear a faint sound, almost too quiet to hear. As the dust began to settle, light pierced the darkness, but it wasn’t the sun’s.
Yellow, fierce and bold, hummed with power. A wall of hard-light surrounded the robot, and its glow cast beams through the air, shadows dancing through the fog. A single figure stood silhouetted against it in the distance, a strand of gold linking the man’s terrible aura to the construct. Anyone who had been in the town for longer than a day knew who it was.
“Sinestro,” the robot muttered, his voice filled with reverence and perhaps a tinge of fear.
The hard-light wall flickered and warped as the energy of the ring rescinded back to its source, and the deputy of the Town With No Name stepped into sight. “Phantom,” he coldly intoned, looking to the machine, “I thought you had this in hand.”
The automaton shook his head and drew his weapon, already scanning for the man who had just thrown a bomb at him. “I think he’s Prime.”
Sinestro’s sharply exhaled and lifted his fist, an amber beam of light instantly cutting through the smog, revealing the textures and terrain beneath it. “Or perhaps he was just made by a powerful Prime.”
Shaking his head, the metal man gargled, “I don’t know Guardian, he was rather fast.” His weapon swept over the smog-choked area. “He might have even been faster than me.”
“A bold claim for a Gunslinger,” the deputy complimented as his keen eyes searched the detritus that now littered his roads, “if what you’ve told me about The City is to be believed.”
The machine snerked, “Every word is true, or I’m not an exo.”
The penetrating ray caught the edge of the tip of a boot as Sinestro swept it by, hiding behind a barrel about twenty meters from the front of the bank. At the speed of thought, a noose whipped out and snared it, dragging the outlaw into the street. The man’s eyes were wild but his hands were still working, desperately slamming rounds into the chambers of his revolvers.
“Is this the man that gave you so much trouble?” the red-skinned deputy asked flatly.
Phantom grunted and nodded, “That’s the one.”
The man snapped his six shooter closed, leveled the barrel, and unloaded. Bullets zinged off of Sinestro’s shield, the thin yellow aura that surrounded every inch of his body. “He’s got a lot of fight in him,” he said aloud to nobody in particular. His amber eyes gleamed and he allowed a sinister smirk to cross his lips. “For a human at least.”
Phantom twirled the oversized pistol in his hand and as he drew down on the outlaw, it burst into a gleam more radiant than the sun. With his Golden Gun in hand, the Gunslinger’s mangled face laughed shortly and grumbled out, “He won’t for long.”
The outlaw glanced between his two targets and his aim suddenly shifted, a trio of rounds clanged off of the exo, tossing his aim to the side as he pulled the trigger. The Golden Gun shot slammed into Sinestro’s shoulder, instantly shattering his shield and carving through his flesh. The lantern snarled as he stumbled to the side and clapped his hand over the wound, purple blood flowing between his fingers. His eyes flared wide at the foolishness of his cohort, but his attention returned to the unnamed bandit before he allowed himself to be distracted by anger.
The pale man dove behind the cover of a parked speeder, warily glancing out while he reloaded. Sinestro scowled, all of the playfulness gone from his countenance. “Not in my town,” he spat, and lifted off of the ground. His clothing was washed away in a wave of yellow, revealing a skin-tight suit beneath.
The lantern glared down at the wounded exo and barked, “Are you ready?”
Phantom nodded in return, and held his opened palm into the air. In perfect unison, both men began to chant.
“In blackest day,” Sinestro’s ring gleamed, pulsing with every word, “in brightest night,”
“Beware your fears made into light!” The weapon began to shudder almost imperceptibly, almost like it was struggling to leave his hand.
“Let those who try to stop what’s right,” the shuddering continued more dramatically, shaking violently.
“Burn like my power,” the ring moved so quickly now that it almost appeared that there were two of them.
“Sinestro’s might!”
A flash devoured the city, blinding anyone unlucky enough to look directly at it. The golden light eventually receded and at its epicenter, a second ring rested on the machine’s extended finger. A tight Sinestro Corps uniform covered his body, a shimmering hard-light cloak replacing the cloth one, an almost digital grid filled in the gaps as it shifted and flickered. Phantom closed his fist around the ring and looked down at it excitedly.
“I am going to corral the civilians out of the area,” Sinestro said, snapping the exo from his revere. “I’ll give you another chance to clean up your mistake.”
“I won’t let you down twice,” Phantom replied confidently, a hard-light revolver materializing in his hand.
Sinestro’s mustache curled into a snarl. “I know.”
He idly pushed the edge of his black hat, peering out from below the wide brim as a coach rode by him down the street. The brougham didn’t even have paint on it but boasted thick locks, iron bars, and more than a few rough looking guards on top of it. It didn’t take much thinking for the man to know that there must have been something inside worth keeping.
The man took a few steps forward as he watched the carriage pass, moving from the shade of the awning he had been under and into the light. The sun caught on the copper buttons that rode down the doubt breasts of his bone-white leather jacket, even if they were more than a little tarnished. His long, slim, clay-colored trousers also sported buttons down each leg, but didn’t have the same shine as the Royal Army Pay Corps ones on his top.
After looking back and forth for a moment, he stalked down the street, following the wagon around a turn at a lazy intersection. It slowed to a stop in front of a large structure with metallic walls and a heavy looking door, and the men offloaded from the top. Even in the daylight, the bright sign that hung on the building’s top read “BANK” in flickering, neon wire.
Nobody had to know everything about the world they lived in as long as they knew where the money came from and where it went. He figured that it couldn’t be that much different in this place. Looking down, he wiped a speck of blood off his jacket. After all, he did know that a bullet still killed a man.
Squinting his eyes, the pale man looked at the burly guards open the locks and open the doors to the wagon, allowing some workers to begin unloading it. Some kind of big green fella, a metal man with a yellow cloak, and then three dumb looking rough-necks. At least three of them were something he was used to shooting. He figured the other two wouldn’t much like the taste of forty four caliber better than a normal person would.
He stalked back the way he had come, around the edge of a wooden building. Even in the middle of the day, summer heat at its peak, the town was bustling. With all manner of freaks and monstrosities all around, the man looked perfectly harmless, if not downright normal. It was almost too easy for him to blend into a passing group and duck into an alley. With all the sound of the electrical generators humming and the sparks from poor connections, not a soul noticed as he held his hands in front of him and summoned a shimmering ball of omnilium.
When he was done with his task, the man strode quickly from the alley and back into the roadway, shouldering his way through the crowd of people and toward the group of guards and their cargo. The green one spotted him and stepped forward, aggressively cocking the lever of his carbine. “I’mma need you ta step away from tha wagon while we unload, stranga,” the creature boomed with inhuman baritone.
The man in the white jacket looked past the giant creature to the robot in yellow. His eyes narrowed as the other three men stepped up to surround him. “Ya’ll some kind of lawmen?” His eyes snapped back to the strange creature that stood before him. The four creatures and their overseer glared into him, their fingers already on their triggers. “I hate lawmen.”
Two pistols left their holsters and fired before the wagon guards could do more than look surprised. Two of the thick-necked humans immediately fell, and the third only managed half a shout before a hole opened up in his neck. The green man cracked off a panicked shot that went over the shooter’s shoulder, only to catch two shots to the chest. When the brightly colored bruiser didn’t immediately fall, the outlaw crossed his left hand over the right pistol and fanned the hammer four more times.
Black powder filled the air, the man’s nostrils stinging with sulfur. He stepped through the smoke and over the green man’s body and its pool of purple blood. Both of his revolvers were leveled at the machine, which hadn’t moved an inch. The man in the white jacket gestured his weapons towards the carriage. “There anything special I gotta know about them boxes?” he asked, a cold edge to his voice.
A static-ridden chuckle came from somewhere inside the robot, its amber eyes glowing with a sinister aura. “Only that they aren’t yours, traveler,” he, if you would call it a he, replied.
The highwayman had to resist the urge to pull the trigger. “I ain’t got much patience for banter, mister.”
Ignoring the man’s statement, the robot tilted its head to the side and parted the tattered yellow cloth that hung around him. A massive revolver hung at the machination’s side, rounds bigger than the man in white had ever seen outside of a cannonball. “Now, how many bullets you got left in that pea-shooter? I know the right one’s empty,” his crackling voice rattled. “You got three, right?”
The crack of the robber’s pistol rang out, and sparks flew from the robot’s face as he was tossed, his back slamming into the side of the carriage he had been sent to defend. The man stared hard for a moment, not sure if he’d killed the damn thing.
“Well, that’s two left,” it growled, and pushed itself up off of the heavily armored vehicle. Another dead-eye shot ricocheted off its brow. The machine’s face was a mangle of bent steel and sparking wires, but its jaw still opened. “Only got one left, traveler.”
The outlaw tore open the top two buttons of his jacket, revealing a bundle of thick red rods. “That’ll do,” he said calmly, pulled the dynamite free, and tossed it in the final guard’s direction.
The aperture of the robot’s optical lenses widened and he dove for cover, but the bark of the man’s pistol heralded a wave of concussive force, smoke and fire that erupted in every direction. The wide street filled with dust, raining debris and screams of the terrified secondaries that hadn’t had the time to run away yet.
Shreds of burning paper and wood fluttered down from the sky, embers danced along the ground. A grotesque silence held over the entryway of the Town’s bank, as if time itself was afraid to see what had happened. The smoke choked the sun’s rays, but if you strained your ears, you could hear a faint sound, almost too quiet to hear. As the dust began to settle, light pierced the darkness, but it wasn’t the sun’s.
Yellow, fierce and bold, hummed with power. A wall of hard-light surrounded the robot, and its glow cast beams through the air, shadows dancing through the fog. A single figure stood silhouetted against it in the distance, a strand of gold linking the man’s terrible aura to the construct. Anyone who had been in the town for longer than a day knew who it was.
“Sinestro,” the robot muttered, his voice filled with reverence and perhaps a tinge of fear.
The hard-light wall flickered and warped as the energy of the ring rescinded back to its source, and the deputy of the Town With No Name stepped into sight. “Phantom,” he coldly intoned, looking to the machine, “I thought you had this in hand.”
The automaton shook his head and drew his weapon, already scanning for the man who had just thrown a bomb at him. “I think he’s Prime.”
Sinestro’s sharply exhaled and lifted his fist, an amber beam of light instantly cutting through the smog, revealing the textures and terrain beneath it. “Or perhaps he was just made by a powerful Prime.”
Shaking his head, the metal man gargled, “I don’t know Guardian, he was rather fast.” His weapon swept over the smog-choked area. “He might have even been faster than me.”
“A bold claim for a Gunslinger,” the deputy complimented as his keen eyes searched the detritus that now littered his roads, “if what you’ve told me about The City is to be believed.”
The machine snerked, “Every word is true, or I’m not an exo.”
The penetrating ray caught the edge of the tip of a boot as Sinestro swept it by, hiding behind a barrel about twenty meters from the front of the bank. At the speed of thought, a noose whipped out and snared it, dragging the outlaw into the street. The man’s eyes were wild but his hands were still working, desperately slamming rounds into the chambers of his revolvers.
“Is this the man that gave you so much trouble?” the red-skinned deputy asked flatly.
Phantom grunted and nodded, “That’s the one.”
The man snapped his six shooter closed, leveled the barrel, and unloaded. Bullets zinged off of Sinestro’s shield, the thin yellow aura that surrounded every inch of his body. “He’s got a lot of fight in him,” he said aloud to nobody in particular. His amber eyes gleamed and he allowed a sinister smirk to cross his lips. “For a human at least.”
Phantom twirled the oversized pistol in his hand and as he drew down on the outlaw, it burst into a gleam more radiant than the sun. With his Golden Gun in hand, the Gunslinger’s mangled face laughed shortly and grumbled out, “He won’t for long.”
The outlaw glanced between his two targets and his aim suddenly shifted, a trio of rounds clanged off of the exo, tossing his aim to the side as he pulled the trigger. The Golden Gun shot slammed into Sinestro’s shoulder, instantly shattering his shield and carving through his flesh. The lantern snarled as he stumbled to the side and clapped his hand over the wound, purple blood flowing between his fingers. His eyes flared wide at the foolishness of his cohort, but his attention returned to the unnamed bandit before he allowed himself to be distracted by anger.
The pale man dove behind the cover of a parked speeder, warily glancing out while he reloaded. Sinestro scowled, all of the playfulness gone from his countenance. “Not in my town,” he spat, and lifted off of the ground. His clothing was washed away in a wave of yellow, revealing a skin-tight suit beneath.
The lantern glared down at the wounded exo and barked, “Are you ready?”
Phantom nodded in return, and held his opened palm into the air. In perfect unison, both men began to chant.
“In blackest day,” Sinestro’s ring gleamed, pulsing with every word, “in brightest night,”
“Beware your fears made into light!” The weapon began to shudder almost imperceptibly, almost like it was struggling to leave his hand.
“Let those who try to stop what’s right,” the shuddering continued more dramatically, shaking violently.
“Burn like my power,” the ring moved so quickly now that it almost appeared that there were two of them.
“Sinestro’s might!”
A flash devoured the city, blinding anyone unlucky enough to look directly at it. The golden light eventually receded and at its epicenter, a second ring rested on the machine’s extended finger. A tight Sinestro Corps uniform covered his body, a shimmering hard-light cloak replacing the cloth one, an almost digital grid filled in the gaps as it shifted and flickered. Phantom closed his fist around the ring and looked down at it excitedly.
“I am going to corral the civilians out of the area,” Sinestro said, snapping the exo from his revere. “I’ll give you another chance to clean up your mistake.”
“I won’t let you down twice,” Phantom replied confidently, a hard-light revolver materializing in his hand.
Sinestro’s mustache curled into a snarl. “I know.”
![[Image: sig2.jpg]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v288/KrimTheUnsettler/sig2.jpg)